23rd April, 2019
Mr Idris Miliki, Executive Director, Centre for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution (CHRCR), has called on the Kogi House of Assembly to sack the 21 Local Government Council Administrators.
Miliki, in a statement on Tuesday in Lokoja, said that the continuous stay of the administrators in office was illegal since the six-month extension, granted to them for the fourth time, elapsed on October 11, 2018.
He observed that the local government was another tier of government for which the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (As Amended), provided in Section 7(1), that “there shall be democratically elected governments”.
Miliki said that the tenure of the last democratically elected councils in the state expired in May 2016, adding that the government had consistently denied the people the right to elect council officials through democratic means.
He urged the assembly to dissolve the administrators or grant them further extension to give them some form of legitimacy since it was the responsibility of the State Assembly to make laws for the local councils.
Miliki particularly noted that both the High Courts in the state and the Supreme Court of Nigeria had pronounced that “Caretakership” or any other nomenclature for local government administrators other than a democratically elected council, was illegal.
He said that the 5th Assembly in Kogi State, under the leadership of former speaker, Abdullahi Bello, also passed a resolution affirming the provisions of the constitution that “Caretakership” at local government level in the state was illegal.
The Executive Director, however, stressed that if the administrators, as a matter of necessity, must continue to operate in the local councils, the assembly, as part of their oversight responsibilities, must grant another extension.